On 5/27/06, Rakhesh Sasidharan <rakheshster@gmail.com> wrote:
> Oh, I didn't know that. So xine is the super dooper player that can
> open all these formats without much of a hassle eh? Cool. :) Quite
> interesting too, you know. Some 5 years ago when I first got into the
> Linux world at college (our labs were all Linux based), xine was the
> player we all used back then. When I started using NetBSD now, I thot
> xine might have been pushed to the background (I didnt like its
> interface much, frankly) and that other players might have taken its
> place. But after a few days of use I see that xine still is the
> reigning chap. Atleast that's the only player (between xine, vlc, and
> totem) that worked well and got me watching a movie. :)
>
> Possibly a dumb question -- but what is the difference between plain
> totem and totem-xine? I know vaguely that its something to do with
> totem using gstreamer plugins, while totem-xine not using them. So
> what does totem-xine use then? Does it invoke xine to do all its work
> -- and so totem-xine is just a xine player in the backend with a totem
> frontend? Hmm?

totem, as many other applications, is a frontend to the multimedia
libraries/codecs.  The plain totem package uses gstreamer as the
backend while totem-xine uses xine.  The DESCR files should make that
clear.

Personally, I think that totem has a quite nice interface and
integrates well with GNOME.  But I mainly use mplayer: no gui but
simple keybindings; I wish other players could be controlled as easily
as mplayer.

-- 
Julio M. Merino Vidal <jmmv84@gmail.com>
The Julipedia - http://julipedia.blogspot.com/